How To Focus On One Thing At A Time

Recently, I’ve been more absent from HelloMoneyTree and I feel like I owe my readers an explanation, I’ve been focusing more on one thing at a time!

Why I started focusing on one thing at a time

So here’s why I started focusing on one thing, I realized that I’ve been taking on too much.

This isn’t my only blog. I have multiple others I’m working on at the moment along with my other business ventures.

I really do try to do as much as I can with the time given but it isn’t always possible to accomplish everything I set out to do every day and it always leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth when I fail to reach my daily goal.

Then I’d looked at other people’s to-do lists and realized something, they have a lot fewer things on their to-do lists. And they seem very happy with the result at the end of the day!

The thing is, with the number of projects I’m taking on at the moment, it’s very hard to confine myself to just a few tasks per day. So it got me thinking about the concept of taking one thing and doing it really well.

No, I’m not abandoning any projects but I’m picking a few to work on for the remainder of the year and only work on one project for some stretch of time before jumping into something else.

I think as humans we may have the tendency to take on more than we can handle at any moment.

There’s even a saying that if you think you’re going to finish it in one year, prepare for it to take 1.5 years or even 2 years. If you think it’s going to take you $10 to finish the project, prepare to spend $30 — $50 to get it done. If you think you’re going to make $100, prepare to accept $60–80.

The truth is, our goals and planning may indeed fall short of our expectations.

So instead of taking on more things, you should stop and contemplate carefully. In fact, you may want to consider removing a few things off your plate first.

Devote your time, energy, and resources to one thing for some time before you allow yourself to get distracted by something else.

When you focus on one thing at a time, you increase your odds of success, you increase your chance of doing it well.

Given our tendency to do things less well than we expected, it’s only reasonable that we spend more time honing one craft at a time.

So how do we focus on one thing at a time? Here’s how.

Step 1: Write down a list of things you want to accomplish

Your first step is to write down a list of things you want to accomplish. This is a place where you can unrestrictedly note it all down.

You can be as detailed as you want. For instance, let’s say you’re a blogger who owns several blogs, your to-accomplish list can look something like this:

• Write an article about ___ for blog A
• Research ___ topic for blog B
• Do keyword research to see what article I should write about on the topic for blog B
• Update plugin for blog C
• Update menus for blog D
• Apply for AdSense for blog E
• Redesign logo for blog F
• Proofread the last 3 articles again for blog A
• Promote yesterday’s article for blog B
• Conduct speed test for all blogs

So on and so on. From just reading the list, you may realize that there are a lot of things to do for a blog let alone if you have more than one.

No, I did not just reveal how many blogs I have. 😉 That was an example.

Step 2: Cross out everything except 3–5 things

Now I want you to look at your list and cross out everything, yes I mean everything except 3 things on the list.

You may want to congregate the 3 things into one blog project instead of having them scattered across all the blog projects.

Are you done? I know it’s hard to pick and if you don’t know how just pick the first 3 things from the list to keep and cross out the rest.

Ok, let’s get to the next step.

Step 3: Pick 1 thing and focus on it for a while

Now that you only have 3 things left on the list, go focus on just 1 for a while and don’t think about the others.

For instance, your list may involve writing an article for blog A. So that’s what you’ll work on. Blog A. You’ll focus on everything that has to do with blog A but more specifically at the moment, writing an article.

Step 4: Dedicate a specific time to work on it every day

Dedicate a specific time every day to work on your project.

If you got a 9–5 job, and your project isn’t your day job, you may need to wake up extra early to do it or stay up late at night to work on it.

You can set a work hour of 5 am — 8 am every day or 8 pm — 12 am every day to work on your project if you have a full-time job.

Step 5: Get to work!

Now that you picked a project and a time to work on your project, you need to start working!

You may decide to break your project down into smaller chunks of steps to tackle. 

For instance, instead of “work on blog A”, you can note down several things:

• Research topic ___ for blog A
• Write a blog post for blog A
• Apply for affiliate networks for blog A

Step 6: Don’t get tunneled visioned

Remember to not get tunneled visioned. You are getting tunneled visioned if you only focus on one aspect of your project.

For instance, if your project is working on Blog A, you don’t want to just focus on creating content, maybe you need to focus on creating info products to sell or focus on promoting your existing blog posts as well.

Focusing on one thing at a time doesn’t mean you should only do one thing forever. Remember to switch it up but keep the long-term vision in mind.

Step 7: Stop, analyze, and improve the wheels

If your wheels are triangular-shaped, you are likely going to have to work very hard to carry your cart around but you may still indeed make good progress if you work hard.

Stopping to analyze and improve the wheels mean you should stop and analyze how you are working and whether there is any improvement you can make to make your process more productive. 

Maybe you realized you are writing the wrong articles, you may have to write thousands of wrong articles for you to make money blogging because every article is a hit or miss but if you stop and take the time to research how to choose the right articles to write, it may take you just hundreds of articles to result in a significant monthly income.

Brutally forcing your next step isn’t always the best solution, you should invest the time and energy into how you can work smarter.

Step 8: Switch to something else when you’re bored or done with the previous project

You may inevitably get bored with one task if you do it long enough and here’s where the other projects on the list come in, pull your other projects back out, and start working on them.

For instance, something else you can work on could be another blog. So when you are bored with blog A, you can work on Blog B.

However, your main focus should still be on blog A, you’ll switch back into working on blog A when you feel your motivation return for blog A.

You may also decide to switch to working on another project for another stretch of time if your first project has been going well enough for you to make the switch.

Final thoughts

So here we are, this is how to focus on one thing at a time. I hope you learned something today, now off I go to focus on one thing at a time! 

You’ll hear from me again soon! I promise I’m still very much involved with HelloMoneyTree!